Refuge
by Menzosarres
Summary: Drea grew up fearing everything magic stood for, isolated in a magicless refuge in the midst of a kingdom filled with such power. When her family is slain by brigands, her life turns upside-down. She finds herself in possession of more magic than she has seen in her life, and the kingdom's most feared, revered mage, Míren, the only hope to teach her to control this newfound power.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Own? Me? Nahhh…

A/N: Hullo, all. Long time no see… And for all I know, long time no see in the future. This is the bit where I say, sadly, no guarantees on update speed. If anyone is actually interested, that is. AU's seem to get… mixed receptions. I've been in a bit of a writing funk for a while now, wanting desperately to write but never having both inspiration and free time at the same moment. Well, best of luck if you do decide to read this; I promise it'll get finished someday, hopefully within the next century but… we shall see. As for the actual story? It's very AU… Fantasy, which I can't say I've attempted before… Magical Mage Miranda and all… As well as fledgling mage Andy and all the possibilities that entails. Some bits may be a bit darker than my previous things, as in… some magical or medieval-type violence, blood and screams and the like, but infrequently. Also, M rating is… future tense. Distant future tense. They really need a separate tense for things that are realllly far in the future. Ahem. I'll stop on the rambling author's note now.

Ever yours,

~Menzosarres.

* * *

_Prologue_

_"We must kill it, Valise. You know the laws. How should it look if I made an exception for this… this creature?"_

_ The sobbing woman clutched the wailing bundle to her chest. "Richard! Stop! Listen to me, please! How can you even let such words pass your lips? You are my husband. She is your child. Your daughter. Only yesterday you rocked her to sleep in your arms."_

_ Richard allowed his face to show regret, sadness, but still hardened against true guilt. "Valise, Valise! You cannot do this. Yesterday, we didn't know that she had magic." He hissed the word out between clenched teeth. "I have not created this safe haven just to have it destroyed by my own child."_

_ He took a step closer to his wife, reaching his arms out for the squalling child, but Valise stepped away, backing into the wall. "No!" she cried, voice breaking. "Take her powers away, get the magic _out_ of her, but you cannot kill her, or… or…" hers tear-filled eyes cleared with intent. "Or you will be killing me as well. I will not lose my firstborn to magic. Magic has taken enough from me."_

_ The fight went out of the man; his shoulders slumped and he allowed himself to fall to his knees before his wife. "You know that cannot be done. It takes many mages to bind the power of another, and even if I were to allow such magic into our town, my people would never accept me again. Look at what we have built here, Valise. We are the only town in the entire Kingdom that is safe from magic's reach. We've truly built a refuge here. This was our dream, our parents dream." He reached up, and although she flinched away from his touch, she allowed his fingers to rest atop hers on the bundle of cloth and child. _

_ "Please, please, please…" Valise murmured, over and over, begging, voice broken, heart seeming ready to pound out of her chest, to break free just to get closer to the tiny, steady heartbeat of her daughter. "There must be something we can…"_

_ "Valise."_

_ "Wait, please!"_

"_Valise!"_

"_Wait!" Her eyes suddenly sparked with passion, glinting with hope. "We don't need to bind her. Not if she can never learns of the power."_

_ "What are you saying? Have you taken complete leave of your senses? How could she not know she has magic? Untrained magic is the most volatile of all."_

_ "Hire a Cloak. Open our walls to all of the Cloaks who have been seeking refuge for so long. Fill the fiefdom with them, and hire one to be our daughter's nursemaid… teacher… governess."_

_ Richard was frozen for a moment. "You… you were the one who… you always refused the Cloaks. You were the one who would not allow me to take in the Cloaks as refugees. You said they…"_

_ "I know what I said," Valise spat. "And I still don't like it; but their magic is certainly the lesser of two evils. You… you may have been right. Is an utter negation of magic truly magic in and of itself? And… any enemy of the mages should be a friend of ours. Cloaks have been persecuted more harshly by the mages than even we have. I've changed my mind. Besides… the crown has been at peace for too long. They are starting to notice us here, with no wartime distractions. They see us denying their mages entrance. We could not truly defend ourselves from magic if a Great Mage came here now. With Cloaks in our Refuge… their magic will be useless. Worthless."_

_ Richard stood slowly, staring down into the wide eyes of his daughter, who had stopped crying somewhere in the last few moments and now gave a happy gurgle, stretching up a chubby fist towards his beard, her favorite plaything. She looked so small, so harmless. But he had seen the will-o-wisps floating above her cradle. He knew what that meant. In the world apart from their small sanctuary, she would be sent to one of the schools, taught to use magic as a tool, as a weapon. She would be consumed by it, like the rest of their kingdom. _

_ Even if she was a weak mage, she would be worth more than the common folk, worth more than her father and mother, because they did not have magic. But here… here in the Sachsvere Refuge… there was no place for her, not truly. If a child was born with magic here, it was culled. Before it could become corrupted with power. Everyone would grieve with the parents, and life would go on. _

_ But he was Lord of Sachsvere. He was a good lord. He had done his people only good. He… he should be able to take this one thing, this one small thing for himself. If he killed this child, he was not only taking away one life, but he would be taking two. He had seen his wife when she returned from the birth, seen the fear, even then, in her eyes, tempered by the love for this strange child. She had grown attached too soon._

_ He had heard her at night, murmuring the girl's name, even though it was not to be given until past the first half-year, past the time when the magic might manifest. _Drea,_ she had whispered. After her grandmother. It was a beautiful name. And once something has a name…_

_ "Please," Valise whispered again, eyes bright with a sort of madly fervent hope. "She never needs to know."_

_ He hung his head and sighed with resignation. "You know I've never been able to say no to you, my love," he finally whispered, defeated._

_ For a moment, as the words sank in, she stood still. Then, she gave a cry of joy, stepping forward into her husband's waiting arms, their star-touched daughter pressed gently between them. _

_ "I'll send out a notice for the Cloaks tomorrow. It may draw the attention of the mages, it may even bring outright hostility, but once the first Cloaks arrive, they won't dare to attack for fear of an outright uprising. I'm sure they will come; anything would be preferable to the slums they are forced into now. Until a suitable nursemaid arrives, however, you will have to stay in the rooms with her. The people already suspect… after the birth… If you could have only made it home sooner… If you hadn't stopped by the damned Elian Falls…"_

_ "It will be alright," she cut him off, not wanting to dwell on her own cursedly early labor… the damming circumstances of her birth… "It will. I know it will. The birth is behind us now."_

_ With that, Valise took her leave via the door to the child's room, not hearing Richard's parting whisper._

"_That birth will never be behind us."_


	2. Chapter I

Disclaimer: Own? Me? Nahhh…

A/N: Sorry, meant to upload this with the prologue, but it got lost somewhere between the flashdrive and the computer.

Chapter I

* * *

Drea did not know how long she had been sitting in the darkness, only that it had been far too long. Her stomach was as empty as it had been in the worst of the Great Hunger, and the water only made her feel swollen and unsatisfied. She knew there was food behind the half-wall, but if she stood, if she walked that way, she could… she might have to touch… There were bodies there.

She couldn't do it. It was the darkness that was the worst. The way it made her entirely unable to know if her hand rested on the water she had spilled from the jug some hours earlier, or if that water had spread, reached the nearest… the nearest body, and if her hand now rested in blood.

She felt her breathing pick up, sounding loud and feral in the darkness, as she resisted the urge to clutch her hand to her chest. Whether it was blood or water, having it on her clothing would only make her feel worse. So she sat still, propped against the cellar wall, and tried not to make a sound.

Drea was nearly certain they had gone by now. Everyone was dead, all of their small wealth had been taken; there was no reason for those horrid men to have stayed. The only thing left of her home was her, cowering here, in the dark, dank, bloodied cellar. But she had heard creaking boards and the bitter spitting of burning wood as recently as two hours ago, and she couldn't be sure that there was not a sentry left behind, or some lone man rummaging for any lingering profit. So she couldn't dare to make a sound. She couldn't dare to do more than hold herself tight with one arm, try to hold herself together, and stare desperately into the darkness in the hopes that someone was out there, that she was not the only one… the only one still alive.

She knew her father's corpse was lying in front of the wine racks, somewhere to her left, lying where he had been forced to kneel in his last moments. Forced to watch as his wife was gutted like a pig on a spear. Then, surrounded by his dead men, they had slit his throat. Drea, hidden in the nook behind the storage barrels – the site of many a childhood game of hide-and-hunt – had had to bite her arm to stifle a scream.

Tears that had been streaming down her face during the ordeal had now long since dried, leaving her skin feeling pinched and withered, like a crabapple. Apples. Her stomach clenched. Only last week, she and Nate had been picking apples in the orchard, laughing about their upcoming marriage, smiling that there were worth things than being promised by your parents to one of your closest friends. Drea could practically taste the bitter skin and crisp flesh of the autumn crop. Her stomach seemed too tired to truly growl, merely shaking in silence within her instead, rattling her spine.

A whimper slipped from between her lips, but she clamped down on her misery. Maybe she should give in, whimper, sob, scream, and let them come and kill her, too. Maybe she did not deserve to be the one to survive. Why should she? Her family was dead, her world was breaking. Even if she survived, what waited for her? A world of evil magic, disguised in illusions of beauty. A life as a servant to the grey-haired mages who ruled even over the royal family. Outside of Sachsvere, she was nothing; her father's legacy was nothing.

But she wasn't ready to give up. She had only seen them here, at the house. She had seen them come with their flaming torches, burning the council room, smoking out her father and the town leaders, rounding them up with her mother and Ms. Clara. But… there could still be others. In the other homes within the Wall… in the farms beyond, still part of her father's Refuge. And Nate. He must be alive, she reasoned. He had gone out… heading to the market to sell bread and pastries from his father's bakery…

Her stomach clenched again, and she heard something crash in one of the rooms above her. She flinched and drew her knees up against her chest, no longer caring what was dripping from her fingers.

_Breathe, Day,_ she could almost her Ms. Clara's voice in her mind. _In for six, hold for six, and out again. Breathe. Don't lose your focus, Day. In for six, hold for six, and out again. _It was the only way to keep herself calm. She could fall into the meditation as easily as walking or talking. After all, Ms. Clara had been her teacher since she could remember. She had taught her reading, history, arithmetic… and self-control. And now she was dead.

Refusing to cry, she started the meditative breathing again. _In for six, hold for six, and out again. _Her eyes drifted shut. She remembered Ms. Clara calling her "Day" for the first time, how the nickname had stuck, even though Drea didn't know where it came from. _In for six, hold for six, and out again._

It was hard to go into herself now, with her breath wanting to leave her in shuddering gasps, trembling with hunger, fear, and cold. The cold told her another night was approaching. Would this be the fourth? Fifth? She had no other way to tell. She pushed such thoughts from her mind.

Soon, her breathing evened, and she followed the memory of Ms. Clara's voice into deeper meditation.

_In for six, hold for six, and out again. Now, stop counting your breath, it is beyond you now. You have moved beneath it. Isolate yourself beneath your breath. Remove anything else you can feel, hear, smell. Feel your breath like a blanket between yourself and the outside world. You are inside yourself now. Go deeper, burrow into your veins, feel your pulse pounding in your ears, then draw yourself beneath it, until you _are_ the pulse, not the blood, but the beating itself. Once nothing exists but that pulse, you may open your eyes. Not your real eyes, of course, but the eyes with which you see yourself. Now, do you see that light? _

Even deeply within herself, Drea could still remember the first time she had seen her "light". She had been seven years old, and Ms. Clara, then her governess, had finally succeeded in bringing Drea into her own mind. She had been a distracted child, always clumsy, knocking things off of shelves without even realizing she had touched them, tripping over things that weren't there. Her parents had worried for her, and Ms. Clara had suggested this meditation to help her control herself. She had told Drea that there was a light inside of her – inside of everyone – that, if left untended, would make her unpredictable and could drive her mad. So she learned to find the light. And there it had been, the first time, a glowing mass of blue fire as smooth as water to her touch and white lightning shining so brightly that it seared itself onto her mind.

After that first day, Ms. Clara had taught her how to bring it to order. Drea had learned to wrap the sparking, dancing lightning around the blue waves, turning it into a marble-sized sphere in her mind's eye, a small world within her, completely under her control. Ms. Clara had always told her that the most important thing to do was to keep her inner self neat and tidy, to never let that lightning or water out, or it would make her do things she did not want to do. Drea had never questioned it, because she trusted Ms. Clara, and, secretly, she enjoyed doing it. She loved the feeling of the light; the white a sharp tingle that sparked her senses, the blue a cleansing chill that slipped through her consciousness like autumn rain. Every morning she would meditate in her room, spending preciously treasured moments in the presence of her own light. Some mornings, she found it hard to leave it behind, so she would take extra care to wrap each bit of straying lightning-like energy into her little sphere.

But sitting on the cellar floor, Drea felt apprehensive, because she had not meditated since the attack. The longest she had gone before had been perhaps two days, and never when she was this… emotion-filled. She hesitated, keeping her inner eyes tightly shut, reaching out tentative tendrils of her consciousness to slip into the chamber where she could find her light.

The moment she "opened her eyes", she knew something was dreadfully wrong. Her calm, controlled, pristine sphere was nowhere to be found. In its place, a maelstrom of surging, raging waters crashed against a sky filled with violent, deadly bursts of electricity, crackling madly in untamable glee. She tried to pull back, to reopen her real eyes, but the waves reached for her presence like grasping tentacles of some wild beast, pulling her down into the midst of the violent storm. She screamed with her mind, trying to swim, trying to keep her head afloat, screaming in wordless pleas for help, but none came. Lightning crackled all about her, reaching for any part of her that crested above the waters. As much as she knew this was just meditation gone wrong, it did not make the fear of drowning any less real, nor did it make her own static energy seem any less menacing. _**HELP. Oh, please, help me.**_ She continued to scream, but here, in the center of herself, she had no voice, and there was no one else to hear if she had.

She struggled amidst the waves for what felt like hours until exhaustion began to set in, her head sank below the waves for longer and longer stretches, and the lightning became almost welcome because she knew it meant she was still afloat. Just as she feared she would die, alone, destroyed by the unwieldy center of her own being, a flash of pure silver light arced overhead, slicing through the clouds of lightning and touching down onto her patch of desolate sea. The waters parted around it, and the molten sliver spread through the waves until it found Drea.

She felt no fear as it approached, and when the light reached her, she went limp into it, feeling suddenly warm, safe, and more exhausted than ever before. She found that she could feel her physical presence once more, kneeling now on trembling legs, and though her eyes felt as heavy as sacks of grain, she managed to pry them open. She caught a vague impression of people beyond her view, but there, just in front of her, stood the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, even with her blurred, tired vision, a woman with hair as pure as the silver light that had been her rescue, whose skin seemed lit from somewhere within, peering down at her from concerned eyes that… seemed to be getting… farther… and farther… away.

The last thing Drea felt was a pair of strong, gentle arms catching her as her vision went dark.


	3. Chapter II

Disclaimer: Own? Me? Nahhh…

A/N: Been a while, hasn't it? My most humble apologies. I hope the length makes up for the lateness. Also, since this is an AU, I would like to ask that, if anyone thinks I'm making Míren and Drea tooooo OOC, would you let me know? I don't want to be _that author_ who goes off into their own world and leaves the fandom cringing behind. My thanks for your most astonishing patience.

Ever yours,

~Menzosarres.

Chapter II

* * *

Drea woke with a gasp, jerking upright and struggling to breathe, the fear of drowning still fresh in her mind.

With a groan, her eyes snapped shut against the bright daylight and she slumped backwards, fighting nausea and a biting headache.

"Whoa! Easy, easy; you've had a rough few days. Don't try to talk; get yourself oriented."

Taking the advice of an unidentified male voice somewhere beside her, she blinked cautiously until her eyes had adjusted, then propped herself up on her elbows until she could take in her surroundings. She could see she was in some sort of canvas tent, lying on a strange little cot covered with a wonderfully soft blanket and wearing a robe of the same material. Beside her stood an odd sort of gentleman. He seemed youthful enough, yet had no hair whatsoever, and he was dressed unlike anyone she had ever seen before, in a peculiarly frilled suit jacket and bright red trousers. Drea was sure she had never before seen a color that vibrant on a piece of cloth, though it evoked a vague memory of a bowl of warm broth that she must have been fed.

She opened her mouth, but her throat was dry, so it took a few tries to manage a hoarse whisper. "W-where am I? Who are you? Is-"

He held up a hand. "I'll do my best to explain, but, please, one question at a time. And perhaps you'll allow me to start with one of my own?" At her silence, he continued. "Would like some water?" he inquired with a quirky smile.

Drea nodded cautiously; still afraid the nausea would return with any sudden motion. The gentleman handed her an intricately carved wooden cup, but Drea was too busy appreciating the water to appreciate the design.

"Not too fast, or you'll make yourself ill. To answer your questions, my name is Nigel Kipling, and you haven't come far from your home. We've set up camp just beyond your… wall."

Drea gasped. She had never been beyond the Wall on her own, always accompanied by Ms. Clara, having learned at a young age that this was one rule upon which her parents would allow no leniency. Pushing aside thoughts of her parents, she asked instead, "The others… were any of the others spared?" Belatedly remembering her manners, she added, "Sir?"

Nigel took the now-empty cup from her hands. His face appeared plaintive as he cautiously replied, "Not many. There were three living wounded we found in the outer dwellings, and a few of the outlying farmers have arrived, following the smoke. Within your wall, though… everything was destroyed. Burned to the ground. You're the only one who survived; I'm sorry."

Drea choked on a sob and buried her head in her palms, drawing in shuddering breaths to keep the tears away long enough to have all her questions answered. "If all of the Refuge is gone, where am I to go?" Before Nigel could reply, she felt a spark of hope. "Oh! Nate! I must find him. He was away, he's still alive! We can start again, rebuild." She swung her legs to the side of the cot. "Thank you ever so much for your... hospitality, but I won't trouble you any longer. I can go..." She braced herself to stand, but a flash of dizziness and a voice from the shadows at the tent's opening gave her pause.

"You will do no such thing."

The voice was quiet, but held such sheer authority that it halted Drea's motion before it could begin. "E-excuse me?"

A woman stepped into the light, and Drea's eyes went wide. Even with the state of delirium she had been in, she would never forget the face of the woman who had saved her. That silver hair... Silver hair!

All of Drea's knowledge of the evils of magic suddenly caught up with her, and she found herself scrambling backwards, falling off her cot in her haste to put distance between herself and what she now recognized as a mage. Her thoughts were racing, and the fact that her head was still pounding was not helping her come to terms with what she was seeing. This was the woman who had saved her life, but for what purpose? This was clearly a mage, and not just any mage, a Great Mage. Not even just any Great Mage, but the only Silver Mage her land had seen in nearly a century. This was the Great Mage Míren, and this woman had murdered hundreds.

"Stay back!" She managed to force out, trying to sound firm while half-sprawled on the floor of the tent. As an exasperated look crossed the woman's face, Drea nearly choked on a squeak of fear. She gave up on any semblance of bravery and whispered, "Please, don't hurt me; I won't give you any trouble, please. My betrothed is at the market, I'll just find him and..." She tried to stand, but fell to her knees instead, gasping and clutching her head as a piercing pain arched between her temples.

She saw the older woman take a step towards her and flinched again, prompting the mage to hold out her hands in a placating gesture. "For Goddess' sake, girl, I'm not going to hurt you. But if you keep jumping around you're going to hurt yourself! Lie back down, or at least sit, and we can talk about exactly why you seem to believe I would want to hurt you, and exactly why I can't be letting you go anywhere right now."

Drea shot a panicked look around the tent, but sometime in the last few moments, Nigel had unobtrusively stepped out, leaving her alone with the last person she ever wanted to meet. "N-no, I have to leave, I have to find Nate, I have a responsibility for the Refuge, I..."

"Absolutely not," Míren cut her off. With a resigned sigh, she added, "You need to lay down, now. I don't think you have any idea how close you came to killing yourself yesterday."

Reluctantly, but afraid to truly anger the woman, Drea made to stand again, but saw spots of black in her vision from just straightening her spine. When she nearly tipped over completely, she heard a muttered, "Damn!" from the mage and suddenly the blanket at her feet was moving. It shifted itself until it was wrapped around a now completely panic-stricken Drea, but she could feel a sort of comforting warmth radiating from it, leaving her with an odd reluctance to fight the clearly magical assistance. The blanket – and Míren's magic – did nothing more than gently lift her feet and slip her back onto the cot before settling over her, a simple piece of cloth once more.

Drea tried to kick it off of her, but the last of her strength seemed to have been used in the moment of panic. Instead, she stared at the woman she had been raised to hate, trying to equate the heartless, murdering villain of her childhood bedtime stories with this strange, silver-haired mage who had seemed to save her life, and didn't appear to mean her any harm.

"Now then, it's clear that you are aware of who I am, but we haven't been formally introduced. Míren Priestly, of Clarkeminster, but you may call me Míren." She stepped over and took a seat at the foot of Drea's cot, and the younger woman felt her breathing quicken, mostly out of fear, but perhaps a bit out of being allowed her first close look at the Great Mage.

Her features were aristocratic, but soft, aside from a slightly harsher nose, giving her the appearance of a beautiful but deadly bird of prey. Drea found herself fixated on the silver hair, knowing that it was a mark of unbounded magic, but unable to stop the thought that it was beautiful, and looked softer than the blanket still wrapped around her. This woman had a presence to her, an aura of strength and power far greater than any she had come across, greater even than her father's strength of rage in the midst of one of his speeches on the evils of magic.

The mage rested one delicate hand just beside Drea's leg. Unbidden, the memory of gentle arms cradling her in the cellar flashed through her mind, bringing with it a sort of phantom touch that raised goose bumps on her arms.

Míren was giving her a curious look, and Drea realized she had been caught staring. She blushed, and struggled to get her voice back enough to return the introduction. "Drea. Drea Sachs o-of Sachsvere Refuge," she managed.

"Drea," Míren murmured. "Meaning, 'of the day,' in the old tongue. It is a lovely name."

"T-thank you. It was my grandmother's," Drea replied shyly. There was something about the way this mage said her name that made a peculiar shiver run down her spine, a sort of echo about the 'r' that she had never heard before. "Everyone calls me Day, though I... didn't realize it had meaning." She was finding it harder and harder to hold on to her fear, and it was worrying her. She knew that mages were evil, cruel, oppressive, but this woman was being kind to her, in a moment when she was feeling terrified and vulnerable. Her world had been burned to the ground, everything was wrong, so who was she to deny that, perhaps, a single mage might not be the worst she had to deal with at this moment.

Besides, she was dreadfully tired. She felt as though every drop of blood in her veins was sluggish, aside from in her head, where it surged against her temples in sharp little stabs of pain. She could not summon even the energy to rub her eyes, but she still knew she had to get out of here.

"Please, I really must be going. My father will... would... want me to rebuild Sachsvere."

Míren stood abruptly and began to pace. "Your father. By the Goddess. Your father was Richard Sachs?"

Drea started to nod, but the pain in her head made her slam her eyes closed and whimper.

Míren stepped closer, ignoring Drea's flinch. "I think I'm beginning to understand where all this fear is coming from, but there are a great many things you do not understand. I am willing to explain them to you, but I am not a woman with endless patience. I need you to show at least enough trust that you won't try to... flee every time I get near you. I can help the pain somewhat, but you must let me touch you. Understood?"

Reluctantly, Drea whispered, "Very well."

The woman stepped out of sight for a moment before Drea felt two slightly chilly, gentle fingers come to rest against her temples. She resisted the urge to pull away.

A brief second later, that urge was gone completely, replaced by a feeling of utter relief. Warmth seemed to be flowing directly into her aching head from Míren's fingers, chasing away the pain and fatigue. It was more than relief, though. It felt _wonderful._ She could feel something unwinding inside of her, reaching out from her chest and being drawn to Míren's power like a moth to a flame. Míren's warmth was spreading, down along her spine and out through her fingertips, soothing, yet invigorating, and the feeling within her chest seemed to be reacting, spreading through her stomach and chasing along down the path Míren's magic had already traced.

Then, Míren removed her fingertips, and the moment ended. Drea barely held in a whimper of protest, before remembering that she shouldn't have allowed the magic near her at all. Her father had always warned her that, no matter how alluring or how good magic may seem, it was all just part of the elaborate illusion that had been allowing mages to oppress the rest of their land for centuries.

"Better?" Míren asked gently.

Cautiously, Drea nodded, finding that only a mere shadow of the earlier pain had returned. Even more cautiously, she asked, "What happened to me? I remember the cellar, I remember the... storm, if it can be called that, I remember when you... well... But why am I here? What happened to me?"

Míren began pacing once more. "You haven't the slightest idea. You don't realize what your parents have robbed you of. All these years..."

She seemed to be talking to herself, voice as soft as an afterthought, yet filled with a frightening scorn. Still, Drea could tell that scorn was not addressed at her, exactly, so she waited in silence for the mage to remember her existence. After a moment, Míren faced her once more.

"That storm, as you called it? That storm will always be inside of you. It always has been. The headache is the aftermath of using too much power at once. Without a Cloak around to suppress it, that storm is your magic."

Drea blinked, waiting for further words that could make sense of the mage's last sentence, but none came.

Drea gave a strangled laugh. "That's insanity. I don't have magic. I'm not... I can't..."

"Of course, you wouldn't know anything about it, now would you," Míren continued, speaking over Drea's words. "Your father being who he is, your mother the second generation of a dead line, they could hardly allow a magechild into their precious _Refuge._" She sounded truly angry now. "But they could hardly kill their own daughter like they kill all the others, no, Richard was never that strong, always the worst of hypocrites. So _that's_ why they let in the Cloaks. Not to protect them from the rest of us, but to protect themselves from you..."

"I-I don't understand," Drea whispered, voice strained, mind refusing to accept the garbled truth she felt infused in the elder woman's words.

Míren sat beside her once more. "You have more power within you than I've seen in decades. Raw, untamed, and untrained, and you cannot return to the life you were living. Your magic will kill you, consume you from within. That storm you were trapped in can be controlled, directed. It isn't something to fear, it's something to revel in. But until you learn control, it will be a thing of fear. I know that you have probably been taught to hate magic with all of your being, but I ask only that you give me a chance to show you that magic is not an evil."

"N-no, no, you must be mistaken. I don't have magic, I can't. I _can't_. My parents aren't mages. No one in my family is. It isn't possible."

"Oh, but it is." Míren's face held an odd passion, a determination; clearly set on some track, and Drea feared she would be run over in the course. "Valise... your mother... her family was once a mageline, a powerful one. Her mother was the first void born into their family. They hoped the power would resurface in Valise herself, but it did not. The third generation is the last chance for magic to be reborn. And here you are."

"No... no," Drea protested, but weakly, now.

"Yes." Míren looked almost triumphant, now, and it made Drea feel ill. "How do you suppose I found you in that cellar, as silent and alone as you were? Your voice was silent, but you were screaming for help, screaming with a beacon of pure, raw power. I could hardly believe it when traced back to Sachsvere, the only place in the kingdom where there should never be magic. Not only that, but you were kneeling there on the floor in a foot of water, white and blue sparks dancing in the air, in the deepest of meditations. Someone has taught you the first part of control. Since I know that, I know that you have felt your magic before. Don't deny it."

"But... Ms. Clara... she taught me to..." Suddenly, the words, _control your inner self, Drea, or you will lose yourself in it_, held new meaning.

"She taught you to keep your magic in chains," Míren spoke with clear anger. "She was a Cloak, yes? Yes. And you were surrounded by Cloaks everywhere you went, but even still..."

Míren raised a hand and held it in the air above Drea's stomach, perhaps a foot away. A glimpse of silver light flitted about the perfectly groomed fingernails, and Drea could feel a visceral reaction within her. The muscles in her lower abdomen shuddered as a bluish-white mist began rising from her, pulled towards Míren's hand.

Drea found the strength to jerk away, gasping, "Stop! What are you doing?"

Míren ignored her inquiry, but lowered her hand. "Even still..." she continued, "your magic was stronger that the dampening effect of a Cloak. She taught you to keep your own magic out of your reach." A pained look crossed Míren's face. "What a crime."

Drea was sitting upright, knees curled under her chin, afraid of the way she responded to the mage's magic. But, more frighteningly still, her rational mind was beginning to accept the truth of at least some of what Míren was saying to her. She was forced to accept that there was... well... something inside of her. She couldn't bring herself to call it magic, not yet, but that didn't make it any less there. Now the only question was... "What now?" she asked. "I mean... if I... if this... How do I get rid of it? How long until I can return to Sachsvere?"

Míren's eyes flashed and Drea shrank back at the fury therein. _"Never,"_ she hissed, before clearly regaining her composure. "That is to say," she started again, "magic is not something that you can simply... get rid of. With Sachsvere destroyed, I doubt there is a Cloak alive with the strength to even try controlling your magic. The same if binding were attempted. Your power would eat alive near any mage who tried to contain it."

Drea grasped on to the one word in that sentence that held any hope. _Near._ "But... you could do it, couldn't you?" she asked in a burst of intuition. "You could bind my m- my magic."

"I could," Míren acknowledged. "But I will not." Seeing the protests on the tip of the younger woman's tongue, she continued. "You have no idea what you would be giving up. Even as limited as you've been, surely you've felt the draw, felt the need to use that energy."

Drea wanted to deny it, but couldn't. Every morning during her meditations, she had longed to spend just one more moment, just another second, inside.

Míren wasn't finished. "Binding you would be more of a crime than allowing you to grow up this way. No, I will not bind you, and nor will anyone else. You have so much more potential than you could ever know, and I do not say such things lightly."

"I don't care!" Drea finally managed, trying to sound indignant without sounding like a sullen child. "I don't want potential, I don't want _magic._ My family, everyone I've ever loved, is dead, and now you try to tempt me away from everything they have stood for? You insult the people who raised me, you flaunt your magic as I cannot fight against it, and you deny me even the peace of knowing that I can at least pretend I haven't lost my very sense of who I am?"

Drea's anger had been broiling beneath her fear since Míren had first callously called her father a hypocrite, and now it had ridden to the surface. Unfortunately, the violent emotions carried something else from within her.

White flares of lightening-like energy began crackling in her hair. Her hands were wreathed in a ghostly light. A caliginous breath of crystalline blue specks sparked along her skin. But Drea's eyes were locked on Míren, so she noticed her rising power as only a strange surge of almost euphoric energy.

"I don't know if every word my father spoke of you is true, but if half of them are, I want nothing to do with it! And even if none of it is, I… I want nothing to do with magic!"

Drea noticed that Míren did not seem to be listening to her, the elder woman's eyes wide in a sort of wonder. Finally, Drea caught sight of her own hands, and a scream tore from her throat. She tried to calm her herself, tried to steady her breaths, but it had no effect, the light continued to dart about her body and grow brighter with every passing moment. Her eyes met Míren's again with a desperate plea. "H-help me, please?" she gasped.

Míren spoke. "It isn't harming you, yet. But it will. It will grow and grow, every time your emotions go beyond your control." She did not seem alarmed by the scene before her, in fact, she seemed strangely drawn to it. "That is why you must learn to channel it, and to call it only when you desire."

Míren was right. Drea could feel her hands growing heavy, and flashes of pain were returning behind her eyes. Worse than this, though, was the feeling of euphoria she couldn't push away. Even beyond her control, even as it was hurting her, letting this part of her out felt wonderful, beautiful. And deadly. "Please," she whispered again. "Please, how do I..."

"So now you want to learn," Míren said dryly. "I'm afraid you can do nothing yourself, without more training," she added. "Which is why you need to go to an academy."

Drea knew what Míren wanted, and part of her hated her for it. Míren wanted her to agree to go with her before she would make this stop. But what other choice did she have? Her fingers were numb, and her eyes felt searingly hot, while her chest seemed ready to burst with that strange joy.

"Yes, okay, yes, I'll... learn. But, please, help me..."

Míren nodded. "Good."

Then, the silver-haired mage reached out with both hands, unerringly grasping through the wash of light and taking hold of Drea's own.

For a moment, she felt afraid for the other woman, but instead of pain appearing in her eyes, Míren's head tossed back in a strange parody of pleasure as the lightning and mist sparking off of Drea raced up her outstretched arms. Drea could still feel it, an odd extension of herself, and she could feel a rush of absolute joy as her light was engulfed in Míren's silver magic. She gasped aloud, her eyes falling shut as she felt each place their magic had come together. It was thrillingly, horrifyingly intimate, but Drea could do nothing to rid herself of the feeling of utter _rightness_. Míren was clearly not even trying to fight it, a wide smile of the sort Drea could never have imagined on the face of so collected, so poised of a woman dancing on her lips, her eyes closed, her skin glowing blue and white and silver as she drank in Drea's power. Her eyes went blank for a moment, then, in a single blink, filled with a wash of molten silver as pure and brilliant as her magic. Drea was entranced, unable to look away, unable to pull her hands free, unable to do anything save breathe, stare, and feel.

Gradually, the light dimmed, and Míren's eyes began to appear human once more. The feelings of joy were slower to fade, achingly so, but as Míren finally relinquished her hands, she felt the headache return to fill in the gaps.

Míren let out a contented sigh, and Drea tried not to stare as she asked, "Is it... always like that? Using magic, I mean."

The older woman chuckled slightly, her mood seeming to have gone from ice-cold to comfortably warm in a matter of moments. "No," she said, offering no further explanations. "It is not."

Drea's eyelids felt heavy once more; her unintentional use of magic had exhausted her yet again.

"Sleep," Míren said. "We will talk again come morning."

Drea, however, was not ready to leave everything just yet. "What of Sachsvere? What if, even after I've learned more about this magic, I don't want it?" she asked, stifling a yawn.

Míren didn't look particularly perturbed by her questions this time. "Oh, I do doubt that will be a problem. However, if you will give it a year, a year without your inbred hatred for our kind, then we can talk of binding again."

It wasn't so much a promise as it was a taunt, but in her position, Drea would take such small things where she could.

Míren rose and pressed her fingers against Drea's temples once more, soothing away that sharp ache. As Drea's eyes fluttered closed for the last time, she heard the other woman whisper, "Magic is many things, but it is not evil. By the Goddess, I _will_ show you that, even should it take a year. That's all."


	4. Chapter III

Disclaimer: Own? Me? Nahhh…

A/N: Just thought I'd mention… if you want a short piece, or one that is fast-paced, or even one that is updated often, I'd scurry off now while you still can. Perhaps my worst habit as an author is that I am very bad at… summarizing things, skipping parts you probably don't need to hear or don't care about, or getting too detailed too often. Also, as I said, I'm delving into unexplored territory for me, here, so if the magic bits get confusing, well, give me a few chapters to sort it all out, and then feel free to say, "Hey! Your story doesn't make any sense!" At which point I'll try to figure out how logical I can even manage to make magic, and probably laugh myself to death trying.

Ah well.

Ever yours,

~Menzosarres.

Chapter III

* * *

The next time Drea woke, she was alone, but she could hear voices somewhere beyond. For a lingering moment, she kept her eyes tightly closed, feeling the warmth of the blanket and smelling the clean scent of the land and praying that she would open her eyes in her small bedroom, window cracked to let in the dawn light, her father and mother talking softly in the kitchen below. But the blanket was far too soft, the light came from no window, and there were three distinct voices beyond her tent, none belonging to her parents. Blinking against tears, she ran her mind through the last things she could remember. Merciless killing. Míren. Magic.

She rose tentatively but found no lingering pain. Clutching the robe tightly about her waist, Drea found that it hung all the way to her ankles. She made for the flap that marked the tent's opening, but a hand appeared from the other side, followed quickly by the form of Nigel Kipling.

"Ah, excellent, you're awake. She was beginning to worry," he said.

"How long have I been sleeping, sir?" Drea asked, staring with new suspicion at Nigel's hairless scalp.

"Almost two days now, but that's to be expected."

Now that she knew he was traveling with a mage, a Great Mage, she wondered if he was one as well. But without the grey hair that most mages of his age would wear proudly, she couldn't be sure if Nigel was merely a bald man, or a mage with something to hide.

Drea could count off everything she knew about mages on one hand, but identifying them was one of those few things she did know. Depending on how powerful a mage was, and how often they used magic, a mage's hair would begin turning grey after the first thirty or forty years of his or her life. The shade depended upon how much of what type of magic they used. She understood that there was light magic and dark magic—though not called by those names—and that the color had little to do with the purpose and more to do with where the magic came from. Beyond this, her father, mother, and Ms. Clara had refused any further inquiries. She knew that Míren's hair was silver, though, because she could use some pure form of magic in a way others could not.

Even in her Refuge, certain magelaws went unbroken. The elderly of her town continued to harvest berries to dye the natural grey out of their hair, as most of that generation had lived in the cities where impersonating a mage was a high crime. She had never heard of a mage impersonating a commoner, though, by shaving their head. The hair was a mark of pride, a sign of status and power.

"Are you—I mean…" she dared not finish the question, afraid to voice insult.

With uncanny perception, Nigel answered her unspoken query. "Yes, I am a mage." He ran a hand across his scalp wistfully before explaining further. "I'd been on my way to negotiate with your father, though, before all this… unfortunate business. I was part of an envoy from the crown; Míren wanted me to be her eyes in these negotiations, and I did not wish to be turned away on sight, so… Off with my hair," he finished, jokingly mournful. He was a friendly sort of man, and clearly trying to make her feel at ease, in his own odd way. Still, Drea was trying not to feel dismayed at being so surrounded by magekind.

"Negotiations?" she asked.

Nigel sighed. "Yes. There had been some… unpleasant circumstances in these parts lately." Nigel looked uncomfortable, and Drea recognized it as the look of someone who knew something they didn't want to tell her. She had seen if often enough from her parents.

"Unpleasant?"

He sidestepped. "We can talk later. Míren told me to bring you once you wakened. She is not the sort of person that it's best to keep waiting, I assure you."

Drea, also already rather afraid of doing anything to anger the Silver Mage, let her questions slide in favor of slipping on a pair of soft, fur-lined leather shoes and following Nigel from the tent into a clearing.

There were three other tents beside her own, each simple in construction, yet more functional than any her father's hunting parties had carried. They surrounded a fire-pit filled with a crackling blaze, fighting off the autumn chill.

Seated on a blanket-draped log by the fire were two women: Míren, wrapped in some sort of dark fur that made her pale skin glow as thought the fire lit her from within, and a young redhead, whose hair bore the unmistakable sheen of someone who had shared ancestry with a creature of fire magic, to vibrant to be purely human. This was the other sort of magic, one that the many magical creatures of this realm had by nature, and which humans could acquire by… interbreeding. Drea shuddered. Three magic-users in one place. Though she had been taught to identify them in all their forms just to keep away from them, she had never actually met so much as a hedgewitch. Now, here she was, meeting three in a matter of days and selling her soul into the hands of the worst of them all.

Míren glanced up at her and Nigel's approach, face impassive. She gave Nigel a brisk nod before turning her gaze upon Drea. The younger woman wondered if there would someday come a time when those eyes did not feel like a physical presence of their own. "I trust you are feeling better, Drea?" Míren asked, voice soft, yet carrying.

Drea nodded, feeling too far out of her element; uncomfortable, on edge, and shy. She caught the gaze of the blazing red-head and twitched back a step at the disdain, even fury, in her eyes. She blinked, wondering what she could have done to so insult the younger mage.

Míren saw Drea's shifted attention and introduced the other woman. "This is my assistant, Emelise."

Despite the look in the 'assistant's' eyes, Drea kept her manners. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Emelise sniffed and said rather sarcastically, "Likewise, I'm sure." She had the accent of the highlands, an accent Drea was familiar with. Ms. Clara had been from the highlands.

Without so much as a polite excuse, Emelise stood and strode away from the fire, disappearing into the mouth of one of the tents.

Nigel leaned over and whispered in Drea's ear, "Em's all huff and no puff... she'll warm up to you soon enough."

Míren seemed not to notice the exchange. She was staring intently at Drea, and it made her feel rather uncomfortable. She fidgeted with the tie of the robe.

"We'll be setting off for Nor'Argaelton at midday."

The capital. Drea felt a seed of excitement growing within her at the thought. She had been trapped within the Refuge so long, and, as any child, she had often dreamed of seeing what lay beyond. She had always respected what her parents had told her, always accepted that the rest of the world was a cruel place, always accepted that her safety depended on them. Now, though she swore not to allow herself to be entranced by magic, she at least had the excuse of these mages to see more of the realm, and learn all she could in the process.

"It should take three days, Goddess permitting. Do you ride?"

Again, Drea nodded. Her father hadn't wanted her to learn, but Nate had taught her when they were children, and she always felt at home in their small stables.

Míren's lips quirked in a ghost of a smile, but it was gone before Drea could even be sure she had seen it. "You're awfully quiet this morning. That's a change. Last we talked, you were quite the... spitfire."

Drea recalled her wild accusations, her fury. But she had said her piece, and she had agreed to travel with this woman, so she would do her best to keep both her promise... and the peace.

She did not reply.

"Come, sit; you must be cold."

Drea met Míren's eyes for a moment, still surprised at the thoughtfulness this mage continued to show towards her. Though her winter-blue eyes did not reflect any seeming of emotion, her words were kind.

Drea took the seat that Emelise had vacated while Nigel squatted across from them, pulling a flask from within his coat and drinking.

All three were silent for a time, Drea drinking in the warmth of the flames, Míren lost somewhere in her own thoughts. Finally, Míren spoke once more. "Is there anything you need before we depart?"

Drea hesitated. There were many ways she would have liked to answer that question. _My freedom. My life back. My magic bound. _Instead, falling back on a contrite, well-mannered upbringing, she started, "Please, ma'am..." She had been downright rude to Míren before, and thought that could be forgiven considering the circumstance, but Drea had been brought up to call those above her by 'sir' and 'ma'am,' so it couldn't hurt to start over. "...If I might have some water to… clean myself." Though the robe was warm and clean, not to mention softer than anything she had touched in her life, her skin felt filthy beneath it, and just feeling the dust between her fingertips brought back the feeling of the cellar.

Míren looked immediately angered, and Drea felt herself cringe back before realizing it was not directed at her. "Do you mean to tell me," she began, addressing Nigel, "that no one gave her so much as a damp cloth?"

Nigel gulped. "An oversight, I'm sure. You did say you wished to see her as soon as she regained consciousness…" he trailed off as her scowl deepened.

"I'm quite aware. However, I would have thought a touch of common sense would not be beyond you. Has she eaten?"

Nigel winced, giving Míren all the answer she needed.

"Have Emelise bring something to the clearing, as well as some clothes; I will take Drea to the river myself, since it appears I cannot get even a scrap of competence today. Follow me."

It took Drea a moment to realize that the last part of Míren's set of orders was directed at her. By then, the silver-haired mage was already halfway to the tree line, dark fur coat flaring out behind her dramatically. Drea gave Nigel a half-panicked, half apologetic glance before following after her.

Drea felt distinctly awkward tromping through the woods in nothing but a robe and the shoes on her feet, but there was a clear path, albeit a narrow one. They walked in silence, passing through a smaller clearing that immediately gave Drea her sense of direction back. She halted in her tracks one she realized where Míren was taking her. "Wait!" she called. "I can't… I can't go here."

Míren looked vaguely annoyed. "I'm afraid that, due to the quick departure we made from the city, we're a bit short on rinsing water, but the pool here will easily do in a pinch."

"N-no, you don't understand, ma'am. We're nearing the Elian River."

Now the mage looked exasperated. "And?"

Drea tried to keep her voice steady, with little success. "T-there are monsters in that river. My father made sure no one ever goes there."

Now, Míren looked confused. "Monsters? Hardly. Perhaps a few dryads in the southern delta, but this portion of the Elian is far from the northern sea. There's absolutely nothing here."

"But…" Drea started, only to be cut off.

"Enough of this nonsense. If you want to bathe, this is the last bit of water within a day's ride. There are no monsters in the Elian. Also, don't call me 'ma'am'. I have a name – use it. That's all."

With that, the woman headed off between the trees once more, and, rather shell-shocked, Drea followed, too scared to stay in this part of the forest alone.

They emerged before a pool at the base of a waterfall that originated somewhere in the cliffs above, too far for Drea to pick out. She had heard of the Elian cliffs, the Elian falls. This was their border. If one climbed the cliffs, they would be in giant territory. No one went there. She glanced nervously at the water. The pool was clear, aside from the froth where the waterfall entered, and she could see the pebbled bottom no more than four or five feet down. Why had her father warned her away from here for so long? A monster would hardly fit in this river, she realized.

Cautiously, Drea stepped onto the nearest mossy boulder ringing the pool. Everything seemed stunningly… vibrant, here. The sun pierced through the shade of the leaves, casting a reflection of the autumn reds, oranges, browns, and golds onto the glassy surface of the pool. She felt an odd… disorientation, a strange sense that everything around her was more important, more alive, than anyplace she had been before. The air felt far warmer against her skin than the weather warranted, and the water looked almost frightfully inviting.

A single jewel-toned dragonfly settled gently on the water, each of its tiny legs creating small dimples in the pristine surface. Drea couldn't seem to draw her eyes away, finding this tiny creature's effect on the pool fascinating.

She was no longer aware of Míren's eyes on her back, watching as she stretched out a tentative hand to dip her fingertips into the water. She was very aware, however, of the shimmering shadow that emerged from beneath the waterfall at her touch and made a beeline for the shore where she knelt.

Drea knew she should be frightened – that shadow was larger than any mere fish – but she felt calm, and she did not draw her fingers back. Even when the shadow was near enough for her to make out its human-like form, even when snowmelt-cold fingertips touched hers, still Drea did not pull back.

She found herself face to face with the most curious creature she had ever seen. She had skin as clear as the water of the pool, warping the colors that Drea could see through her into a murky autumn rainbow that formed a parody of a woman's body. It was definitely a _her_, as the translucent body wore no clothing, though anything below the waist was indistinguishable from the water in which she stood. She had lips as white as sea foam, eyes a shade between white and pink and shining like pearls, hair that sprouted clear from her head, but darkened to a gleaming gold where the ends hung beneath her water-hewn breasts. For all that she appeared to have been sculpted from the stream itself; her hand felt as solid as Drea's own where it rested in her grip.

The creature smiled warmly, and Drea could not help the corners of her lips turning up in answer.

"I expected you some time ago," she spoke. Her voice was two-toned, a breathy, beautiful chime underlain with a powerful, deep echo.

Drea's voice was barely a whisper when she replied, "Have we... met?"

The creature smiled again. "Met? Yes. You might say that."

"I feel it... I feel we must've but... when? How?" Drea had all but forgotten Míren's presence. "What are you?"

"A dryad." It was Míren who had spoken, voice disdainful, leaving the shadows of the tree line and approaching the pool. "This explains quite a few small mysteries. I had so wondered where your water magic came from, as I was unaware that you had any inhuman ancestry. Still, I, too, would like to know the 'when' and the 'how'."

The dryad's expression had gone wary at the other woman's approach, but she did not flee. "You, I have not met," she said, "though I know _of you_, Míren of Clarkeminster." Her grip had tightened around Drea's fingers, as though ready to flee at any moment and take the younger woman with her.

Míren inclined her head and did not approach any further. "Then you have me at an advantage, as I do not even know your name."

The fingers loosened, apparently deciding that Míren was not a threat... for now.

"You could not say it if I did tell you, but you may call me Vae," though she answered Míren's words, she was clearly speaking to Drea. "As for your other questions... I met you just as you were meeting yourself."

Drea blinked at the odd words.

"Though I suppose it was not a meeting in the most traditional sense, as you were rather busy being born."

Drea's eyebrows rose.

The dryad cocked her head with a motion too fluid to belong to anything human. "I've kept my eye on you as best I could, but your family did make things difficult for me."

"I don't understand," Drea murmured.

A second chilly hand closed overtop Drea's, completely enclosing her own. "I felt responsible for you, I suppose." The two-toned voice seemed to echo in Drea's head, making it difficult to discern the mood of the words

"Why?"

The dryad nodded towards their joined hands, and Drea found herself once more staring at the gleaming blue dewdrops of magic clinging to her fingertips... and to Vae's. She gasped aloud as she realized that she was seeing two separate magics, her own and that of the dryad's, but that they were a perfect match. None of the lightning, none of the volatile white she had summoned before was here now, only this sheen of blue. Vae pulled away and the magic rolled from Drea's fingers like droplets off a leaf, dripping down onto the surface of the pool as nothing more than raindrops. Shaken, she drew her hand away.

Vae slid lower into the water, but continued to smile at Drea. "Come into the water and let me tell you a story," she said, voice growing lyrical, the two tones weaving about each other; hypnotic, tugging at Drea's will. She could feel the draw. The water suddenly looked so very… inviting. Clear, and fresh and—

"Vae," Míren said sharply from somewhere behind Drea as she saw the younger girl leaning forward. "Stop that."

Drea heard Míren's voice as though she were already underwater. She found her hands unfastening the tie that held the robe shut.

"Drea!" Míren said, voice still quiet, but with a tone of warning that made Drea hesitate with the robe half off her shoulders.

"Relax, Silver Mage, I mean your new acquisition no harm. Both her body and mind could use the cleansing of running water. This little mage has never been into a place where the water is free… and you, Silver Mage, know little of waterbound magic. I will answer all the questions you have, both of you. Drea," she continued in that alluring voice, saying her name for the first time. "Come into the water."

The robe pooled on the bank as she stood, placing one foot onto a rock just below the surface. At though from a great distance, she heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her, but with the dryad's voice coaxing her forward, she felt no shame at her state of undress. She knew the water should be cold, nearly freezing, but first her foot, then her legs, then waist, chest, and shoulders were completely submerged, and the pool felt just as warm as her body, softer than the robe, and more _alive_ than the birds singing above them. She could feel where the current was strongest, the river flowing along the rocks at the bottom even as it let the surface stand still, pristine save the ripples she was making. She could feel the eddies her ankles made in this current, feel the river letting her in, feel it accepting her presence.

Eyes open, she let her head slip beneath the surface.

It was beautiful. The water was like liquid light, lifting her, holding her, cleaning the dirt from her body and freeing some burden from the darkest corner of her mind. She knew this was magic, some strange, wild magic she knew little about, but Míren's words echoed in her head. _It isn't something to fear, it's something to revel in._ Still, this magic was… missing something. The euphoria she had felt the last time she felt her power was… distant, and there was an odd feeling of something trickling away from her, like water through a sieve.

After some immeasurable moment, her head broke the surface once more with a gasp, lungs telling her that, no matter how much 'waterbound' magic she had, she was not a fish. Vae was smiling that white-lipped smile from a few feet away, while Míren had come to stand just beside the water's edge, looking worried.

Whatever spell Vae's voice had cast over her was fading, and suddenly Drea realized that she was as naked as the dryad and her hair was not quite so strategically placed, nor was her lower body quite so see-through. Blushing but unwilling to leave the water, she maneuvered awkwardly over to where the foam of the waterfall would keep her decent. Vae laughed, a sound oddly grating now that her voice had lost its spellbinding quality.

Drea wanted to be angry at the dryad for whatever she had done, but she doubted she ever would have gotten in the water without it, and it just felt so _wonderful_ to be clean again, that she couldn't hold a grudge. "I believe you promised us an explanation, did you not?" Míren asked impatiently.

Vae's face disappeared underwater for a moment and Drea caught a glimpse two oddly shaped feet flashing above the surface before the dryad reappeared in front of Míren. Míren did not react but Drea jumped, startled enough for them both.

"That I did. You may get a bit uncomfortable standing there, though; it's a bit of a long story. I don't suppose you'd care to join us?"

"Don't even try it," Míren replied.

She shrugged in another of those inhumanly fluid movements. "Very well."

And so she began.

"I cannot tell you what your mother was doing this far beyond your Refuge, nor can I say what you were doing being born so far before your due. But here she was, and there you were, and I was here as well. I am not a dryad who would usually reside in this sort of river; rather, my home is in the southern sea. But I do like to explore, and I had never been to this close to the falls before. Two days before your mother arrived, however, I was... injured. I'm not sure how to explain beyond that to one who is not of my kind, but sufficed to say I was dying.

"Then three women appeared: two companions and one heavily pregnant, screaming, crying woman. They wanted her to keep going, to get her home, but she couldn't. So they took her to the pool, set her down in the shallows. Even you land-bound humans know that water is good for some things. And so you were born.

"I was hidden where you found me today, that shallow cave behind the falls. There was very little of me left, I was fading away into the water. But I heard you crying with that weak little voice, and I felt the magic inside of you, and I knew I could save myself. How much do you know of your own magic?"

It took Drea a moment to respond, as Vae's voice had captured all of her attention. "Very little, and I'm beginning to think perhaps none at all."

"Hmm. Human magic is limited only by the person whose hands are wielding it. The elemental magic of my people, or any _creature,_ as you so call us, be they firebound, earthbound, or windbound, is more limited in some ways, but more powerful in others. While a mage might take months to reroute a river... pulling and tugging on their dichotomy of life magic and its backlash, you or I could just... ask it to move. But beyond the water, I have little power, and I must be within the water to even exist. However all waterbound beings have one other gift. We may... move magic. Just as a stream may borrow a boulder from the bank and put it back somewhere downriver, I can borrow the life magic of a mage, so long as I put some of my own magic back to take its place."

"I thought it must have been something like that," Míren interrupted. Speaking almost to herself, she mused, "And, since you were a newborn, you were purely life magic. So she took enough of that to heal her, and replaced it with waterbound magic. Of course, this must have jumpstarted your dormant magic. Without it, you would have been born as just another void..."

Drea did her best to wrap her mind around all she was hearing. "So... I have half of both?" she asked, not sure who she was addressing the question to.

"Not exactly—"

"Actually—" both started at the same time.

Míren shot a glare at Vae before continuing. "No. Borrowing some of your innate magic did nothing to your real power. You can use as much magic as you wish, but it will always replenish itself with time. In essence, she simply added waterbound magic to what was already within you. Not as powerful as a dryad's, or a selkie's or even a sprite's, not on its own but..." A strange look appeared in the Silver Mage's eyes. She looked almost... hungry. "... when paired with your own… "

Vae nodded her agreement. "Now, usually I could borrow a bit of magic from a common mage and their humanity would immediately reject the water magic. That is what we do. But since you were so young, and since I had to take so much to heal myself, your body didn't have the strength to reject it, so it used it instead."

Míren's eyes widened. "I'd always wondered why you lure mages into your rivers and oceans. You don't want to kill us, exactly. You just drain the magic from us for your own use, like a parasite."

"Yes, though often the drowning is an unfortunate side effect. You were wise not to come into my pool. While I would hardly harm one of my own..." she shrugged and dipped below the surface, popping up on the far side. "...your magic would be too tasty to resist."

At that point, everything was beginning to make a bit too much sense to Drea, and she was starting to believe that her father may have been right about one thing... there was a monster in the Elian. Vae had seemed so... if not human, than at least civilized. She spoke like a human, but her words revealed the reason why so many people feared the creatures of the realm. Trying not to move too abruptly, she set out for the bank where she had dropped her robe, propelling herself awkwardly from rock to rock with all but her head beneath the surface.

"Going so soon?" Vae inquired, the higher part of her voice falsely light while the lower growled a warning. "You really should stay awhile."

Drea stiffened. The voice had gone silky and mesmerizing once again. She tried not to let it affect her, but the water seemed to be getting harder and harder to push through.

"See, I've been getting rather lonely out here, ever since your father found out that your mother had seen a dryad at your birth and had the river dammed up before it could reach his safe little Refuge."

The pearly eyes had darkened to a color more closely resembling an oyster shell, the gold of the hair was tarnishing to a green as deep as strands of kelp, and the white lips were drawing back to reveal needle-sharp teeth; still water-like in color, but with a brittleness too them, like shards of ice. Drea saw the change with her eyes, but her mind was still fighting through the honey-sweet tone of her words.

"You should stay a time. I could teach you anything you ever wanted to know."

Drea wasn't moving towards the bank any longer. She couldn't pull herself farther away from Vae, could only fight not to go towards her.

"What do you want from me?" she managed to gasp out.

Vae had drawn closer. She tilted up Drea's chin with one ice-cold finger. "You are a pretty thing," she said, not giving an answer.

Drea jerked her chin away. The touch felt wrong, even if the water was telling her everything was alright.

Suddenly, Vae drew back, hissing with a dreadful clash of her two voices. With no warning, she disappeared beneath the waterfall, into the cave, leaving a dazed Drea to scramble onto the nearest bank, trembling. Before she could even stand, Míren was there with her robe, wrapping it around her like a blanket and holding on to her shaking shoulders with a reassuringly human warmth and protective strength.

Opening her eyes, she caught sight of Emelise at the edge of the clearing, looking confused. "What did I miss? This place is a bloody swamp of water magic." She sniffed with clear distaste, like a cat perched at the edge of a bathing tub.

When she received only a blank stare from Drea she turned her glance to Míren. "Leave the things and return to camp. That's all."

She set down the basket of food and clothes Nigel had sent for them and left with nothing more than a parting glare at Drea and the words, "Yes, Míren."

"W-what just happened?" Drea squeaked.

Míren dropped her hands from the younger mage's shoulders with a sigh. Drea immediately missed the contact, but she pushed such thoughts from her mind and drew the robe on properly. "Come. We should get a bit away from here. I'll explain as we go."

Míren started off into the trees again, leaving Drea to grab the basket and follow.

"I almost had to do something idiotic, then," Míren started. "I have no idea how my sort of magic would have reacted when Vae tried to take it for her own, which is what surely would have happened had I tried to take you from her. But Emelise has nothing if not peculiarly good timing. In most circumstances, a dryad would not fear a fire-mage, especially one so weak as Emelise, but as she is trapped in a river whose bed is run through with veins of coal she had good reason to flee. One small forest fire could send this entire stream underground." Realizing Vae's predicament, Drea felt almost sorry for her, almost guilty, as it was her own fault that she had been dammed in with no hope of returning to the sea. But remembering her callous remark about drowning people, she pushed aside her pity.

"I still don't understand... what did she want with me?"

Míren halted a few paces ahead and turned to face Drea with an unreadable expression. "You are unique, do you understand that? There are going to be many in this realm who will want you, for many reasons. Most of them will not be honorable ones," she said, as though she were... admitting something. She turned and began walking again. "In this case, it is fairly clear why she wanted you. You would have been an inexhaustible source of life magic for her. Because you had water magic within you, she could draw from you again and again, and use that power how she would."

"But... why did she need it? Can't she just... reroute the river, like she said?"

Míren scoffed. "Hardly. That was nothing more than a bluff, and I wondered at the time why she said it. With your power, though, she could have easily broken down your father's dam. She took some from you already, while you were in the waterfall. I suppose she did us both a favor, as it should be easier for you to control your power these next few days."

Drea stopped, and Míren walked a few more paces before she noticed the younger woman was no longer just behind her. She turned to face Drea once more, and was met with pleading eyes. "Can't you see? I can't live like this. I can't control this, I don't want to! I'm a danger to myself, to people around me, even to you! Please, just make it stop! I know I said I wouldn't ask but please, please, I don't want this! Just bind it, take it away from me!"

Drea knew she was crying, and she didn't want to, but she couldn't help it. Míren walked up to her and placed a finger under her chin, lifting it so that Drea would meet her eyes. It was a parody of the ice-cold touch of the dryad, but where the dryad's touch had seemed wrong, this touch was warm and soft while commanding all the same, and it made Drea feel more herself.

"You are not a danger to me, and you never will be. I can protect myself. All I want is to give you the same. Have patience, and you will soon have control, and once you have control—" Míren's eyes darkened. "—I doubt you will be asking me to bind you again. No matter how much fear you felt today, I saw your joy when you first went into the pool. You're learning already what... pleasure... magic can bring."

With that, the Silver Mage lowered her hand and resumed her walk through the trees.


End file.
